Laura Murray: Let's do what Macdonald didn't

City of Kingston employees remove graffiti on the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada's first prime minister, in City Park in Kingston, Ont. on Friday Jan. 11, 2013.Lars Hagberg / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Sir John A. Macdonald’s 200th birthday is upon us. Across Canada, celebrations are afoot; at the Historica-Dominion Institute’s SirJohnADay website you can even print out a party hat.

But I have to go on record as a party-pooper.

It’s not that I don’t care. I live in Kingston, Ontario: Macdonald’s town. Little John came here from Scotland when he was five years old; he got his start in politics here, and he was buried here.

Kingston is littered with historical plaques about Macdonald, with another going up this week beside his imposing statue. We have Sir John A. Macdonald Boulevard, Sir John A. Macdonald School, and even a locomotive dubbed “The Spirit of Sir John A.”

Over the past couple of years, there has been even more hoopla than usual. A musical. Celebrity walking tours. Grants for heritage projects. Organizers are telling us to “get hyped” for the big celebration this coming weekend.

I love living in Kingston, where the past is always present. I’ve done community history here and worked to save historic buildings. I sit on Kingston’s official Heritage Committee.

But all this celebration just rubs me the wrong way. Without a doubt, Macdonald’s efforts were key to the creation of Canada. But does that mean we have to love the guy? I’ve never been one to worship idols, and I don’t see why I should start with Macdonald.

That famous railroad? Macdonald engaged in rampant graft to get it through. His government starved Indigenous people on the plains into submission to get it through. His government treated Chinese immigrants like dirt to get it through, and then came up with a head tax so more people of that “semi-barbaric, inferior race” couldn’t come to Canada.

The treaties negotiated and implemented during Macdonald’s many years in office, his treatment of the Métis, his creation of residential schools and reserves: these Macdonald legacies are inextricable from the history of the railroad and the history of Confederation. And they are with us now, every day, in communities and courts alike. They pose some of Canada’s greatest challenges.

Macdonald fans enjoy raising a toast to “Sir John A,” their old jovial uncle. He wasn’t perfect, they concede. He sometimes had a few too many. He could be moody, and a bit of a bully. But he was a poor immigrant boy, they say. He had family problems. And he was just so good at what he did. Besides, racism was more common back then. And politics was a dirty business. Cut him some slack.

But Macdonald was not just any old racist sitting around in a bar. If he was, we wouldn’t be celebrating him. He was, as we are always being told, a nation builder. And as James Daschuk’s award-winning book Clearing the Plains demonstrates, he was definitely aware that his policies on the plains were killing people. He kept on with his nation building.

The “good old boy” approach to Macdonald is a smokescreen. It hides the genocidal practices on which our country was founded. It tells us that if a person overcomes personal hardship and then does wrong, it isn’t really his fault. It tells us that we shouldn’t expect ourselves or others to surpass the limited moral expectations of the world around us. It tells us that the lives of non-white people are not worth as much as the lives of white people. It tells us that selective memory is history.

We must resist these messages with all our might.

The best way to observe the bicentennial, to my mind, is through sincere efforts to improve the lives of First Nations people, intensified efforts to develop a fair and visionary immigration policy, and serious efforts aimed at transparency and honesty in government. Let’s do what Macdonald didn’t. Then I’ll be ready to party.

Laura Murray is a professor of English and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.

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